NEWS: Pres. Abbas will reportedly call for renewed negotiations with Israel without preconditions following a UN vote in November. PM Netanyahu announces new Israeli elections for early 2013. Former Israeli PM Olmert may be considering a comeback. More rockets are fired at southern Israel from Gaza following renewed Israeli airstrikes. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has softened his stance towards the Palestinians. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon face growing health concerns. Hamas says it will investigate reports that its forces abused journalists. The Israeli military says it may reinstitute Arabic translations during military tribunals in the occupied West Bank. The unemployment rate among Palestinian citizens of Israel appears to be twice as high as previously thought. The PA reiterates that lack of interest from donors has intensified its cash crisis. The PA approves the first private-sector Palestinian minimum wage. COMMENTARY: Hussein Ibish says settler violence is inherent to the social dynamics and ideology of the occupation. Andrew Quinn says Romney's Middle East policy speech was short on details. Chris McGreal asks if there any real differences between Romney's policies and Pres. Obama's. Sefi Rachlevsky says it's possible for a coalition of non-right-wing political parties to prevail in the next election. Gershon Baskin says turning away from a two-state solution would be a disaster for both Israeli and Palestinian self-determination. Emad El Din Adeeb thinks the 1973 war was an Arab military victory. Reuven Pedatzur says Israel can deter Iran. A new film looks at sexual affairs between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Aaron David Miller says neither Obama nor Romney are as "good" or "bad" on Israel as Jewish Americans think. Abdullatif Al-Mulhim says the Arab world has wasted billions of dollars and tens of thousands of innocent lives quixotically fighting Israel.

Arab Spring and the Israeli enemy
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Abdulateef Al-Mulhim - (Opinion) October 6, 2012 - 12:00am

Thirty-nine years ago, on Oct. 6, 1973, the third major war between the Arabs and Israel broke out. The war lasted only 20 days. The two sides were engaged in two other major wars, in 1948 and 1967.

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Enough Already
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Foreign Policy
by Aaron David Miller - (Opinion) October 9, 2012 - 12:00am

Once every four years, rational, right-thinking Americans get crazy. Election ads clearly hype up an already polarized electorate. And right about now, on the hot-button issues of the day -- debt, deficit, who's leading from behind in foreign policy and who's not -- many Americans seem to lose the capacity to think for themselves.

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New Film Explores Israeli, Arab Views on Sex With the ‘Other’
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor
by Sophie Claudet - (Interview) October 9, 2012 - 12:00am

PARIS — It all started when Yolande Zauberman and her partner in life and work, Selim Nassib, began to work on a screenplay of Nassib’s novel, The Palestinian Lover, which tells the story of an alleged, passionate affair between Golda Meir and a rich Arab banker in then British-administered Palestine.

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Israel Can Deter Iran
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Monitor
by Reuven Pedatzur - (Opinion) October 9, 2012 - 12:00am

The failure of Israeli policymaking with regards to the Iranian nuclear threat is rooted in the fact that Israeli leaders are completely ignoring the need to discuss Israel’s policy in the event that Iran succeeds in equipping itself with nuclear weapons. In all the discussions taking place in the closed forums led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the focus is on one question alone: whether or not to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities.

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The miraculous October 1973 victory
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Asharq Alawsat
by Emad El Din Adeeb - (Opinion) September 10, 2012 - 12:00am

I find it particularly painful when some of my colleagues show a lack of appreciation for the victorious October 1973 war; a miraculous humanitarian and military victory by any standards.

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Zionist fantacide
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Gershon Baskin - (Opinion) October 9, 2012 - 12:00am

A day doesn’t go by when I am not asked “isn’t the two-state solution dead?” Today I was asked twice. A former staunch Israeli supporter of this solution called me this evening and said he wanted to begin talking to Palestinians about other options because “it is too late to move the settlers out of the West Bank, they are there to stay and we have to find some way to live together.”

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61 seats - mission possible
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Sefi Rachlevsky - (Opinion) October 10, 2012 - 12:00am

A year ago, in private conversations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak marked the winter of 2013 as the time for elections - and not because of the budget. The reason was U.S. President Barack Obama. Netanyahu wanted Obama to have as little time as possible to take revenge on him. The thing is, now Republican candidate Mitt Romney might win. To risk losing eight months with him as president - months so decisive for a war with Iran - is a tough gamble for Netanyahu.

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Is Romney's foreign policy a radical departure from Obama's?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Chris McGreal - (Opinion) October 8, 2012 - 12:00am

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has given his most detailed foreign policy speech to date. But how does Romney's vision for America's place in the world compare to the policies currently being pursued by the Obama administration – and there any contradictions? Syria

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Romney spares details as he hits Obama on foreign policy
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Andrew Quinn - (Analysis) October 8, 2012 - 12:00am

WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Monday ratcheted up his campaign to cast President Barack Obama as a weak steward of U.S. power, but offered few specific clues about how he would handle world crises differently.

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